Art by Peter Heywood

Past Work

Block Wave 3

In the past year or two I've tried to replicate in glass something I made in wood about 40 years ago - a row of twisted columns made from stacks of cubes. I tried hard but I couldn't get it to work - see Block Wave 2.

My recent "Flutter" project got me thinking - how about making one in mirror polished stainless steel? I could chop up a piece of box section, cap each piece in a way that built-in a 10 degree twist. I decided to try a fairly small-scale version to start with....

Project completed on 26 June 2017

I made 160 end caps from 3.5-mm-thick plywood, using a laser cutter - that's 80 top and 80 bottom caps.

Designing the caps in Rhino and then laser cutting them (see photo) meant it was fairly fast and accurate. I was able to rotate the small locating holes 10 degrees in the bottom caps, building in a twist.

Here's the completed top caps.

The central hole enabled me to thread the cubes on to a 4-mm-dia threaded bar.

The two little holes created the built-in twist.

I cut nails and glued them into the bottom caps, using the top caps as a temporary way of ensuring the nails would be vertical.

I bought a 2-m length of 25-mm stainless steel box section, cut it into 25-mm lengths, ground off all the edges and then got them mirror polished by a specialist company.

I made this box to prevent the polished cubes getting scratched. Sections of uncapped box section are on the right, ones with top caps glued in place are on the left.

I'm pleased with the end result. I love the way the reflections make it look as though you can see inside the cubes.